The Dragon King

  The young werewolf left her chair and approached Adelaide, who met her gaze. “What did you see?” Danny asked. Dannai’s best friend was a werewolf seer, Lilith Kane. Roman wondered whether perhaps she’d seen this kind of thing before.

  Addie shook her head and frowned. “It wasn’t good. It was chaos. Just complete and utter chaos. There was fire, there were gun blasts, there was… I don’t know. People were screaming, gods… there were thousands of people. I think I even saw some being trampled.” She shivered violently, either an after effect of the vision or a response to what she’d seen, and Nick pulled her fast into his embrace. This time, she let him hold her.

  Nicholas eyed Dannai over Addie’s head. “You seen something like this before?” he asked, probably thinking the same thing Roman was.

  Danny shook her head. “No. Not of this magnitude. But… Lily sometimes sees old places that have been restored.”

  Now it was Poppy’s turn to speak up. “She’s right. And there is a theater with an old-looking Paramount sign in front of it,” she told them. “It’s the Paramount Theater of Seattle. It’s almost a hundred years old, but restored, and they still pull in a full house nearly every show.” Poppy Scaul was the Winter Queen and she happened to live in Seattle – when she wasn’t in the Palace of the Winter Kingdom with her husband, Kristopher. If anyone would know about the theatre, Roman supposed she would.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” asked Diana Chroi, the Goblin Queen, as she pushed away from the table and stood. As a healer, it wasn’t surprising that she was one of the first to stand. Empathy ran through her veins. Others followed her example, and soon everyone was on their feet.

  Evie turned to Roman. “We have to go,” she told him. But in her head, she sent a private thought his way. We have no choice. But this is more than what it seems, isn’t it?

  Yes, he returned. He had a very bad feeling. Something was changing in the world. A scale was tipping. There were strange and new forces in the atmosphere. He felt them in his body the way an old man might feel the weather. But you’re right. We have no choice. If the disaster in Seattle was being caused by something supernatural, then it was their duty to stop it. And clean up the mess.

  “We’ll split up,” he told the others. As the ringleader, more or less, it was up to Roman to decide who went and who stayed and continued the search for Evangeline. “Healers, warlocks, Akyri, fae, and Kristopher, you’ll come with me. The rest of you, keep looking for the Traitor.” He wanted healers with him for the humans, warlocks and Akyri for their offensive and defensive magic, the fae for their sheer power, and Kristopher for his ability to control the weather to some degree. But it was all he could spare from the search. If the twelfth queen went down… they would all go down. The end of this game saw Thirteen Queens standing together against a powerful checkmate. Without them united, the war would be lost.

  The group was splitting up, exchanging last words of advice, and beginning to prepare transport spells, when a sudden sound caught them all once more. It was small, but ominous enough to again gain everyone’s attention. It was the clock on the wall. It had stopped.

  And then started up again with a louder than usual tock. Roman looked up at the clock for a moment, swallowed, then scanned the room.

  The Time King was missing. The fact that this meant something was a very strong resolution in Roman’s mind, but he didn’t know why. What did it mean? What did the clock mean?

  Roman turned to look at Calidum over his shoulder.

  But the Dragon King was gone as well.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Korridum… she’s there.

  They were three words, and only three words. But they were strong, desperate. And Calidum recognized the voice at once, despite the millennia separating him and the speaker.

  Ban… he thought, mystified. It was Bantariax – the Great Black.

  Calidum straightened and made the initial mistake of asking Roman if he’d heard the voice. It was automatic, this need to know whether something that occurred to you was isolated. But he very quickly realized his mistake and rectified it in his own ensuing silence amidst a room that was fast becoming a den of concern.

  The seers in the room were having visions; an event of terrible proportions was taking place, and it most likely had something to do with the Entity or Amunet. Probably both.

  Immediately, Calidum sent out feelers of his power. He knew what Ban was telling him, and time was short. He had to redouble his concentration in order to keep anyone in the meeting room from sensing what he was doing, but the fact that something crucial had their pressing attention made it a little easier.

  Ban’s contact meant there was a hole in the Nomads’ shield around Arach and Eva, and Cal knew enough to not waste any time in finding it. He also knew enough not to let any of the others in on the find, for very good reason.

  A dragon was going to die that night. A Legendary.

  When a Legendary died, they took what felt like half the world out with them. The Thirteen factions desperately needed their Thirteen to be whole, particularly when it came to the queens. A battle of epic proportions was on the horizon. A dawn of misery was upon them, and without the Thirteen Queens, the side of compassion and love didn’t stand a chance against fear and hate. Calidum could not and would not chance losing anyone else in this battle with the Traitor. It was going to be difficult enough for him to get Eva out in time… whether or not he made it out along with her.

  It had been thousands of years, a term of time incomprehensible to most mortals, and he had a host of questions for Bantariax: Where the hell have you been hiding? How are you communicating with me now? Where are you? But they would have to wait. Nothing mattered now but finding Eva.

  He kept a low profile in the room, backing up until he was against the far wall and out of sight for most of the room’s inhabitants. All the while, his power snaked out like invisible smoke, poking and prodding at the boundary between him and Eva. It was indescribable, a magical shield of this magnitude. It wasn’t as much a physical thing as a membrane of immaterial, invisible, and enormous proportions, with no end and no beginning, a barrier that defied dimension, and hence defied defeat.

  But he knew a way through such a membrane – provided there was a weakness in it somewhere. And now there was.

  All he needed to do was concentrate on Eva. There was a small but significant connection between them. It had formed long, long ago, when she’d been born the daughter of a Legendary. The three Legendaries were not brothers, but they were formed of the same cosmic material, and in that manner, he and Eva shared a link. He shared it with all Legendaries, though Bantariax had managed to keep his cut off completely for millennia.

  If Cal was lucky, if he tried hard enough, his connection to Eva would form a rope of sorts, and that rope would find the opening and slip through. He would then follow the rope through the barrier.

  He searched. People moved around him. He searched harder, his hairline dampening with droplets of sweat as he pushed so hard and so far, it began to hurt. It was a strain on every neuron in his system as they fed magic from his heart of magic into his body and then the atmosphere. In the back of his mind, he worried, because he knew he would need all of his strength for the upcoming fight. But it was the back of his mind for a reason. That was where he put all the thoughts he was prepared to ignore.

  Come on, come on damn it! At last, there was the slightest glimmer, a brief flash of something like light, as if star shine had reflected off clear, broken gelatin. Calidum’s many hearts skipped painfully. He zeroed in, swinging his power back to the spot he’d run over, and concentrated all of his effort on that single, promising area. It was all he had.

  Eva! he mentally called, sending the thought with fierce force through the tiny tear. There was no voiced response, but he did sense a kind of reply. It was primal. It was furious. And it alarmed Calidum to no end.

  No one noticed when he transported out of the room and into a por
tal that whisked him across Tokyo, Japan. At once, the walls of the portal were a tell-tale black. His portals were usually gray, from the lightness of fog to the thickness of charcoal, but this – this was night, deep and dark and filled with the stars of creation. It shimmered around him like a cosmic rainbow, hewn in shades of black, deep dark purple, and indigo one breath away from oblivion. It was stunning.

  Under different circumstances, Calidum might have stayed within the portal and gazed at the colors, become lost in their depth and soul-searing beauty. Under much different circumstances.

  Instead, he rushed the portal to its destination, lending to its magic and speed with a bit of his own, further taxing his store of power. But there was no helping it. Evangeline was on the other side of this hallway.

  The portal flashed open with far more power than he’d planned, and to lend to the surprise of the blast was the fact that it opened inward rather than outward. A furious flood of magic surged into the portal, slamming into him like a ton of bricks to send him flying back through the tunnel as if he were weightless. The darkness that had painted the portal walls like a swirling cosmos at once surrounded him with an intense, nearly painful energy. It crackled and roared like thunder, and zaps of indigo-blue lightning laced through it with mind-bendingly deadly beauty. But it wasn’t painful.

  It wasn’t. And that was dreadfully important.

  It meant that it was Eva’s magic, and she had no desire to hurt him.

  Calidum was on his feet and racing toward the exit once more, fighting against the breaker of swelling power with tremendous force until he at last exited the portal and stepped into what had once been a relatively ordinary, though clearly opulent penthouse suite somewhere in downtown Tokyo.

  There, he stopped. As the portal slammed shut, Calidum stared at the vision before him with a mixture of awe-inspired fear – and awe-inspired pride.

  She did it, he thought numbly while he gazed up at his magnificent queen.

  She finally did it.

  Evangeline, the daughter of the Nomad Katrielle and the Legendary Great Black Bantariax, had finally found her true dragon form… and changed into it with all the glory and wonder of an angel breaking an apocalyptic seal.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The windows in the penthouse were all shattered. Most of the furniture had been incinerated. The metal appliances were melted, just as they had been in his own apartment in the alternate dimension. The destruction was much the same. There were two differences this time, however. One was that this home no longer had a roof.

  It had been blown away entirely, and the sky overhead rumbled and turned and twisted in a building spiral of menacing clouds laced with purple and indigo lightning. A storm of astronomical magnitude was forming over Tokyo.

  The second and more pertinent difference was that a massive black dragon stood at the center of the destruction, its wingspan hundreds of feet across in either direction. They covered the top of the sky scraper like an umbrella. The dragon’s shimmering rainbow black scales were individually the size of SUV windshields, and her enormous eyes burned a deep purple fire of unquenchable fury. Long razor sharp fangs promised the poison of night while claws curled like knives into the marble below.

  But her wings…. By the gods, her wings, his mind whispered. What glorious, magnificent wings fate had granted her. They were by far the most exquisite he’d ever seen on a dragon, traditionally formed like those of a bat, but iridescent like the wings of a dragonfly.

  She was a vision from a sinner’s worst nightmare, and a dreamer’s final escape, larger than life and more beautiful than anything Calidum had ever beheld. Pure, unadultered wonder claimed him, and had it not been for the smell of her blood – her spilled blood – Calidum might have stood there forever, gazing up at the mighty behemoth that was the daughter of a Legendary.

  However, her blood he did smell, and too much of it.

  Arach, the man who had given up his dragon heritage for that of a Nomad, stood at the very edge of the massive penthouse suite, his shoes inches from a ledge that would see him plummet hundreds of feet were he human. But rather than fear, it was an anger of nearly equal proportions that his glowing red eyes possessed, and they were narrowed at the woman who had apparently decided to fight back.

  Arach glanced at Calidum and bared his fangs. Clearly he was not pleased about this development either. But his attention was back on his prize within split seconds.

  “Ungrateful,” he hissed at Eva with unfettered malice. “You have no idea what you give up by defying me.”

  But the dragon didn’t respond aloud. Rather, Evangeline spoke in Arach’s mind – and because Calidum was Calidum, he heard her.

  I have every idea, she told him frankly in a voice that Calidum could not have fallen more in love with. I’ve given up you. And that will do.

  She took a mammoth stride forward with such colossal impact on the marble floor beneath her, the stone cracked, and that crack raced to either side of the suite like a living being, until the apartment was veritably sliced in half, and Calidum could hear screams from below. Human screams.

  I need to contain this, he thought – even though every bone in his Legendary body wanted to do no such thing.

  If I don’t, innocent people will die.

  But his gaze slid from Evangeline to the chains her movement had revealed coiled on the floor of the broken suite behind her. They were heavy, cruel chains ending in strong metal cuffs. He could feel the warding magic on those cuffs even from where he stood. It was powerful, meant to keep her in place despite her generous magical gifts.

  Worse, he could smell her blood on them. Hell, he could see it.

  Calidum felt the domino of final, culminating change inside him begin to tip as a possessive wrath took firm hold of him. Eva never would have escaped those chains and their wards if it had not been for her transformation. A dragon’s first full change was monumental. It contained just enough power to earn her freedom.

  That mother fucker tied her up, his mind seethed. He hurt her. That was why he could smell her blood. Of course, he’d known that Arach would do something like that, hadn’t he? What did he think Arach would do with her? He’d known. But seeing the evidence of his worst fears was too much.

  That domino wavered. If it were to fall, it would tip another, which would tip another, and within seconds there would be two dragons in this apartment rather than one. The disturbance of their combined presence would most likely cause the building beneath them to collapse.

  He listened to the screams from below. Get ahold of yourself! he commanded brutally.

  But the Traitor knew what to do to her. He took her from me.

  If you don’t stop this, people are going to die!

  Yes, Arach will, he thought with menacing glee. Eva’s going to kill him.

  No, he remembered suddenly. Wait. Eva was a Nomad, and so was Arach. She literally couldn’t kill him.

  Calidum turned his attention to Arach, but he was seeing the Nomad vampire in the harsh contrasted lines of a predatory gaze now, as the muscles on his back began to form wings, and transformation magic wrapped around him like a cocoon.

  The Traitor, for his part, was busy pulling magic of his own in front of him like a shield. The barrier he created was deep blood red and crackled with as much energy as displayed by the sky overhead. But it was a protective move. For all his newfound power, for all of the things Calidum knew Arach should be able to do as a Nomad, Eva had him on the defensive. Cal almost smiled at that. But he wasn’t in a smiling mood.

  So he gave his inner domino a ruthless nudge, and transformed instead.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Amunet grinned ear to ear. The night was blossoming like a lotus, filled with the brightest colors – white, orange, red. Fire licked at the walls all around her, and the music of terrified screams joined the choir. People tried to brush past her, but she was immovable, as was her companion, and when they made contact with her shoulder or elb
ow, they were brought up short as if striking a wall. They would glance at her strangely for a millisecond, then regain their panic and move around her.

  She and Ahriman were steadfast stones in a human river of bedlam that flowed around them in a desperate attempt at escape. It had taken so little effort on their part to fan the proverbial flames of hatred and fear already present in the crowd. Soon, a punch was flying. Then another. Then a knife was drawn, and so was blood. Someone ignited their lighter. The beautiful drapes went up, and people began running. They pole-vaulted their bodies over rows of velvet seating, scrambled without heed of women or children for the aisles, and stuffed themselves through wide doorways that were still too narrow to accommodate a panicked multitude.

  The stationed guards with their weapons began firing, their minds sent into turmoil with the slightest push on the Nomads’ parts. People fell, and more ran over their stilled corpses.

  “This is so much better than a musical,” whispered Amunet. Her king chuckled. He had a deep, dark chuckle, and she looked up at him. He was watching the crowd as well. “How many so far?” she asked, because she knew that he would know. He would sense a dying person’s fear of what lay beyond. There was no fear like it, that terror in those final moments, and he knew fear better than anyone. He would be able to tell her how many people had died as of yet that night.

  “Twenty-six,” he said. “Two adolescents, one child.”

  That was a little disappointing, but the humans had been fleeing less than a minute. Perhaps it would take more time…. Or she could help things along.

  She looked up at the doors to the main theater, and willed them to swing shut. They did so – with tremendous force, slamming into several humans and smashing one between their metal as the doors insistently connected. There was a fair amount of blood.